Last weekend, Cass and I read Ally Condie's Crossed, a sequel to Matched, and my worst fears came true. . . Ally Condie is a Stephanie Meyers. Okay, that was rude. She's not that bad. But my fears of Crossed turning into more of a Twilight than a Hunger Games came true for sure.
Problems:
1. The novel lacks voice -- esp because I read this in-between/at the same time as The Help and Sing You Home [reviews coming soon!] which were also told from different perspectives and done much better.
2. Condie says "says" too much. I know she doesn't want to be all "he exclaimed" & "she gasped" all over the page-- but just cut it out. Just dialogue it. "Blah." Enter. Indent. "Talk-ity-talk." Enter. Indent. Carry on. In all fairness, I may have noticed this one more because I was reading it aloud to Cass. I didn't notice it as much while reading silently.
3. I'm not sure any of my questions were even answered, other than Ky's back-story. But I guess that's why there is a third book . . .
4. I still do not like Ky. He still just creeps me out.
Overall, meh. I'll still read the third when it comes out, but it's just not my type of book. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about guilty pleasure teen books. This one just isn't for me. I think I'll go read The Giver now.
I'm so happy that somebody else doesn't like Twilight as much as I do. Although the story IDEA was fantastic, I think it was executed poorly. I love reading your reviews, jayme. You give me ideas on which books to read next, and which ones to definitely avoid!
ReplyDeleteKara
www.frecklesandrouge.com
Thanks! And I agree about Twilight! I think the whole vampires/werewolves thing could have been awesome, but it was all blah-teenage-love-story.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you! I didn't even finish the Twilight series because it made me want to gag. I didn't like the way she wrote it and I couldn't stand Bella and I'm not sure I understand why everyone thinks Edward is so great...I find him creepy. It did have potential though, she had some very clever ideas about vampires and werewolves. She just wrote it to a different audience than me, I guess. :p
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